Feelings are a weird thing for me. I try to be aware of the feelings of others and sensitive to how my behaviour might affect someone. I don't always succeed. I don't always realize the hurt I've caused until later, sometimes much later. My guess is that most of us are like that.
But, my feelings are a different matter.
Today I was expecting some bad news. Today I got some bad news. (Nothing to do with health, people always go there immediately when you're disabled or fat.) Now the bad news I got wasn't as bad as I expected, for which I was grateful, but it was still bad news. It's like I expected to be punched and kicked but instead got a sound, strong, slap across the face. And right now, right this minute, I'm not allowing myself to feel badly, or even grieve a bit as a result of getting bad news. I've got this voice calling me down for having an emotional reaction at all, "It wasn't like you were punched and kicked like you expected." "But I was hit, hard, and it hurt." "It didn't hurt like it could have hurt, what's wrong with you?"
What's that about?
All I want is a few minutes to react to the bad news.
All I want is to allow myself to FEEL SAD without an internal lecture.
All I want is to hear my heart say, "You shouldn't have be slapped, you didn't deserve that."
But.
It seems I can't.
It seems like I've got no control over that voice that tells me that it is right and good to always and everywhere be glad to be slapped hard, even repeatedly, than be punched and kicked.
Really?
Be glad to be hit?
Now, I wasn't physically hurt, I'm just using that an an analogy, but I did feel pain at the news, and the fact that the news wasn't as bad as it could have been is kind of irrelevant to the part of me that wants to feel, but it isn't to the part of me that wants to lecture and belittle.
Sometimes I wish that I would just shut up so I could listen to me. That's a weird sentence but it's the only way to say what I'm trying to say.
Oh, those mean voices....hiding in the background and then jumping on you when you are feeling vulnerable.
ReplyDeletetake care, Dave.
clairesmum
You are ENTITLED to one thing in this life: your feelings.
ReplyDeleteThen you get to choose how you want to react to them (yes, there is a choice).
Acknowledge your feelings and HONOR them. They tell you where YOU, uniquely, are at this moment.
I have had feelings I didn't like in myself. Some of those, upon reflection, I worked on in a particular way every time they happened, still acknowledging them, but picking at the WHY until I understood that I had been brought up in a certain time and place, and those feelings were part of that package.
Some of them, I am happy to say, now automatically redirect to where I want them to, and that is progress. I don't know if they will ever truly go away, but I did the work, and I understand the feelings, and I choose something different than what they imply.
But I don't pretend they don't exist, and I grant them whatever legitimacy they deserve.
And I claim them as MINE.
You don't want to NOT FEEL.
In one of the classes I teach to folks, one of the homework sheets asks the question "What was the function of the emotion?" Emotions serve to communicate to others, to motivate to action, or to reinforce something (a thought, an idea / belief, an event, a relationship, an emotion's recurrence, etc.). What I hear ya writing is that there's a part of you that wants to feel what it is you feel . . . and another part of you second guessing the emotion itself. Perhaps looking at the function of an emotion your internal critic speaks up about will quiet that critic over time.
ReplyDeleteYou are who you are and feel what you feel - and all of it is valid given the uniqueness of you and your context. (You've certainly traveled your own unique path - full of contrasts.)
Just a thought for what its worth . . .
=)